He had secured, in the two years at the seminary, a fairly good groundwork of the common English branches, and his occasional reading, and especially his attendance upon law-suits, had given him a really creditable understanding of common law. The Judge always insisted that law was simple, but it wasn't as profitable as--chicanery. "Any man, from his fund of common sense, can settle nine tenths of all law-suits, but that aint what we're here for. A successful lawyer is the fellow who tangles things up and keeps common law and common sense subordinated to chicanery and precedent. Damn precedent, anyway. It means referring to a past that didn't know, and didn't want to know, what justice was." In the atmosphere of lectures like these, Bradley had unconsciously absorbed a great deal of radical thought about law-codes, and now went about the study of the history of enactments and change of statutes without any servile awe of the past. The Judge's irreverence had its uses, for it put a law on its merits before the young student. He found the law-school a very congenial place to study. He passed the examinations quite decently. His life there was quiet and studious, for he felt that he had less time than the younger men. His age seemed excessive to him, by contrast. He was very generally respected as a quiet, decent fellow, who might be a fine consulting lawyer, but not a good man in the courts. They changed this opinion very suddenly upon hearing him present his first plea. His life consisted for the most part of passing to and fro from his boarding-place to his recitation-room, or to long hours of digging in the library. He saw from time to time notices of Miss Wilbur's lectures in the interests of the grange and upon literary topics. He determined to hear her if she came into any neighboring city. There was no one to spy upon him, if he made an expedition of that sort. One beautiful winter day he read in the weekly paper of the town that she was about to appear at the Congregational church in a lecture entitled, "The Real Woman-question." He had an impulse to sing, which he wisely repressed, for he couldn't sing--that is, nothing which the hearer would recognize as singing. The Fates seemed working in his favor. He had preserved a marked sweetness and purity of thought through all his hard life that made him a good type of man. His clear, steady eyes never gave offence to any woman, for nothing but sympathy and admiration ever looked out of them. The very thought that she was coming so near brought a curious numbness into his muscles and a tremor into his hands. He looked forward now to the evening of the lecture with the keenest interest he had ever felt.